It's an adventure – a learning adventure!

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Monthly Archives: May 2012

This blog is called {It’s} Not a Holiday as that has become our family catch cry whenever we talk about our up and coming trip. We don’t want to be thinking this is a relaxing get away. We will be on the move and we will be learning. So “It’s not a holiday” – it’s a learning adventure.

Let me introduce you to our family:

We live in the Kimberly region of Western Australia – unique and outback part of Australia. We live on a small farm where we grow Sandalwood trees.

Peter: He works as a vet – he flies across huge distances to serve the cattle properties.

Belinda: I am a stay at home mum, I homeschool our kids, I enjoy writing, scrapbooking and would love to get back to sewing.

Joshua: our eldest son – he is now studying history and politics with Open University Australia (an external studies university)

Jessica: is taking a gap year, filling her days with the things that she is interested and passionate about

Naomi and Daniel are both homeschooled. Naomi is enjoying the local amateur drama group this year. Daniel has enjoyed making rafts for our dam, reading, writing stories, and the wii!

One of the foundational ideas that we live by is that learning is a lifestyle – that learning happens wherever you are and whenever and whatever you do. We learn day in and day out. Learning also is a lifelong pursuit – it doesn’t stop at the end of highschool. Learning is something we treasure, something we pursue. This is another reason this trip is not a holiday. A holiday is a time you just relax and yes, though we are sure you will learn something, learning isn’t a main priority. This time away for our family has a few main objectives.

To be together – to strengthen our relationships as we build memories

To learn – To see God’s world and how man has interacted with it and each other over the years.

As we reflect on history to think about God’s truths and how they relate to us today

To see God’s Creation – and to marvel!

We are looking forward to this time. We’ve spent months in preparation – not only the travel plan thing, but also preparing our children with knowledge of the areas we are to see. I hope that I have tickled their imaginations, given them enough to be interested and yet not too much so they are still asking questions.

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Though we are still tweaking some of the details we have settled on our main destinations. (live map so you can see closer)

We leave here on the 13th July – drive to Darwin

Fly to Singapore

And then onto Turkey. From Istanbul we will take a tour around through the center and back up to Istanbul again. Some of the highlights there for us will be Ephesus, Cappadocia, and Gallipoli.

Then onto Italy – Rome, Florence and Venice (maybe with a dog-leg tour to some other place)

Then onto Switzerland. We are not so much touring around there but rather taking a scenic train and then staying put for a few days near Mt Titlis.

We return late August.

One of the biggest truths we’ve had to accept is that we won’t be able to see everything. The world is too big and too interesting for that to happen in 6 weeks. We narrowed our choices down to Turkey and Italy mainly for the sake of history and art. We chose Switzerland so we could see a part of God’s creation that is so vastly different than the corner we live in.

We are trying to balance the interests of every family member with the idea that maybe we could discover things we simply don’t yet know exist. We need to balance the needs of each member as well – some could look at and talk about history for days…. others need variety! We have different levels of fitness and abilities. Working together, giving and taking will be a part of travelling together – but it is a part of the planning stages too!

Tolerance: Accepting others who differ from myself

this will be one of the character traits we will need to be aware of as we spend time together as a family.

We have dreamed, hoped, planned to be able to take our family overseas on a learning adventure for many many years. The time has finally come.

On Christmas Day part of our gift to the children was to tell them of our plan and to invite them to join in with planning where we go and what we see.

We set aside a day to talk and dream. We had asked the kids a few years back where they would like to go and the general consensus was Turkey and Italy but when we asked them this year they all said England. All of them!!! They then asked me where I’d like to go and I said, Turkey and Italy (since that is where my heart had been thinking for some time) and they all responded – “Oh, yes, let’s go there” and on they prattled about why they would like to go there.

Of course cost is always a factor and we discussed that everything was in dreaming stage until we received a quote. In the meantime we needed to know what type of thing did we think Turkey, Italy and even England had that we would be interested in. Historical ruins and art where our strongest themes until Grandad reminded us that we were very focused on man’s creation and he was surprised we were ignoring God’s creation. We took that on board and have since tried to balance both.

Passports are in order

Air tickets are booked

Accommodation booked

Tours are booked

And we now have 50 days for the finer details!

This is a family blog, where each one will contribute every so often (especially once we get travelling) so we hope you’ll join us on our learning adventure.